The Pluto setup seems pretty slick, and doesn't require much effort. In that setup, does it include any ability (besides the web administration tool) to remote into that box with something like VNC? On a lark, I tried to use UltraVNC from my laptop, pointing it to the Pluto core, but no joy.

It seems strange: Pluto's goal seems to be to make a powerful but easy interface to everything in one's home, yet configuring the system to start out with is so complicated that it might cancel out any eventual gain.

You can use SSH to remote into the Core via command-line. Under Windows I use Putty. To get a UI you need to set up an Orbiter on the remote PC (you do this through the Pluto Admin webpage and download the Windows client from there as well).

See http://plutohome.com/wiki/index.php/Orbiters for more information on Orbiters. Note that using an Orbiter isn't exactly like VNC, but rather allows you to control the Core. However, from a UI perspective it's pretty much what you get on the Core/Hybrid with the exception of Media Playback (which you probably wouldn't do over VNC anyway).

You can use SSH to remote into the Core via command-line. Under Windows I use Putty. To get a UI you need to set up an Orbiter on the remote PC (you do this through the Pluto Admin webpage and download the Windows client from there as well).

See http://plutohome.com/wiki/index.php/Orbiters for more information on Orbiters. Note that using an Orbiter isn't exactly like VNC, but rather allows you to control the Core. However, from a UI perspective it's pretty much what you get on the Core/Hybrid with the exception of Media Playback (which you probably wouldn't do over VNC anyway).

Hmmm. Well, I read in another post that a user wanted to setup more than one video capture card to work with Myth, but got a reply back that it is difficult to do in Pluto, requiring manually configuring it. Thought that might help. Also, during my testing, I've been shutting down the system during the day (while I'm at work), and seems to only way to do that was at the console of the core machine (and non-obvious to an seasoned Windows user). Again, hoping to not have to always run a monitor on that computer, but rather access it remotely.

Yes, it definitely is. And employees stick their heads in here every once in awhile to answer questions. However, being a Windows guy myself I've had to make use of the small community in these forums and my Linux friends to help me over some of the humps.

Definitely set up an Orbiter on your Windows box then. From there you'll be able to reload the router or reboot the Core as required. Unfortunately there's no "Shutdown" command in there, just reboot.

If your talking about shutting down the core from the console on a Core or via ssh you can use;

shutdown now

If you want to shutdown from the MD's Orbiter UI then just use the 'Power' button on the main menu screen. If you want to reboot the MD or Hybrid from the Orbiter UI then click on the Pluto menu from the main menu then click on reset button for the MD you want to reboot.